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Digital Bridge
Level 2, 166 Wellington Street
Collingwood, 3066
Victoria, Australia

POSTAL ADDRESS
PO Box 2680, Fitzroy DC
Fitzroy, 3065
Victoria, Australia

TELEPHONE
+61 3 9417 3477

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+61 3 9091 6788

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1300 664 435

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info@digitalbridge.com.au

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Flash Websites - The Good and The Bad

What is flash?

Flash is a web technology from Macromedia that allows animations, interactive forms, games and other 'jazzed-up' features to be embedded in web pages. Flash movies need a plug-in called Flash Player installed in your browser to run.

As exciting as it sounds so far, this technology also has disadvantages. It’s important to know the good and bad if you are considering a website that contains Flash. Here are some of them:

Advantages

  • Most people have flash. Macromedia claims that 98% of computer users have Flash Player installed.
  • Flash allows total freedom of the use of audio & visual. The sky is the boundary.
  • Flash uses vector graphics, which means that the graphics can be scaled to any size without losing clarity/quality.
  • The size of Flash movies is relatively small.

Disadvantages

  • Larger companies often restrict Internet access of their corporate computers from loading Flash movies. Most computers in offices also don’t have speakers. Hence Flash Movies with sound is ineffective.
  • Flash works poorly with search. Search engines can not detect text in a flash file. ‘Find in page’ feature in browsers can’t search through text in flash either. A website that is coded entirely in Flash is less accessible.
  • Some people get annoyed when they have to wait for a flash website to load. They are likely to go elsewhere instead of waiting. In contrast, HTML loads instantly.

So, what is the answer to all this? We suggest you think about the demographics of your users.

  • Are they busy people in offices who have restricted internet access?
  • Are they stay-home dads who have time to wait for a website to load?
  • Are they young adults who like games & funky colourful interface?
  • Are they senior people with limited knowledge of the internet who will get overwhelmed by animation and sound?

If you still can’t decide, it doesn’t hurt to use Flash in some parts of the website, while keeping the content and structure in HTML.

If you can see the animation below, that means you have Flash Player installed. Otherwise you can download it for free here.

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